Book Review: Devil Take the Hindmost - A history of financial speculation by Edward Chancellor
Devil Take the Hindmost by Edward Chancellor provides a detailed account of some of the major financial speculative manias from the early modern period. Some of the events described in detail include the Tulip mania in the Netherlands starting in 1637, the South Sea bubble surrounding the South Sea company stock in 1720, the South American government bond bubble in the 1820's, the UK bank failures and resulting crash of 1825, the gold speculative mania of 1869 in the U.S., the failing of Jay Cooke and Co. Bank and the resulting depression in 1873, the Great Depression of 1929, the silver bubble and junk bond mania of the 1980's, the October 1987 crash, the Kamikaze capitalism of 1980's in Japan followed by the big crash, the savings and loan crisis of 1991, the Mexican crisis of 1994, the Asian crisis of 1997, the Russian default of 1998, the hedge fund LTCM collapse in 1998. Edward Chancellor also provides great detail of political corruption in UK, Japan and the U.S. After reading through this book, the 2008 housing market crash will not seem as surprising to you and so will any other future financial crisis. You will definitely conclude that financial speculative manias are not modern day inventions.
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